The
President of the United States is a liar, a bigot, a criminal, a sexual
predator and a probable traitor.That is
how I began my talk at the New England Political Science Association’s Annual
Meeting on the paper Sandy Levinson and I wrote that was just published by the
Chapman Law Review: “The Constitutional Powers of Anti-Publian Presidents:
Constitutional Interpretation in a Broken Constitutional Order.”Let that sink in a bit.The President of the United States is a liar,
a bigot, a criminal, a sexual predator and a probable traitor. We do not need fancy psychiatric terms to
describe Donald Trump or experts to make a diagnosis.In layman’s terms, he is a liar, a bigot, a
criminal, a sexual predator and a probable traitor.

Other
politicians tell lies and break laws.We
can have partisan debates over whether Mitt Romney told more lies and more
important lies than Barack Obama or whether John Yoo and friends broke more
laws and more important laws than Hillary Clinton.We can have more serious debates over whether
constitutional democracy in the United States can survive what has become the “normal”
amount of lying and law-breaking by prominent politicians.Donald Trump is nevertheless different.He is dimensionally a bigger and more frequent liar than
any prominent politician in the United States.He is the most racist president since Woodrow Wilson, who at least had
the excuse of being no more racist than a high percentage of the population at
the time.Trump has violated more laws
and a greater variety of laws than any president in American history or any prominent
contemporary politician.Trump’s sexual
predation and philandering make John Kennedy appear a choir boy.He is the only prominent politician after the
Civil War who can be seriously accused of being a traitor, making deals with
foreign enemies for personal advantage.

“The
Constitutional Powers of Anti-Publian Presidents” suggests that constitutional thinking
in the United States must take into account that the president is a liar, a
bigot, a criminal, a sexual predator and a probable traitor.Sandy and I reject the “don’t tell the
children” approach in 2018 to executive power, that pretends that Donald Trump
is no different than Abraham Lincoln or even Chester Arthur, and is entitled to
the same deference as presidents who are not liars, bigots, criminals, sexual
predators, and probably traitors.More
important, we want to open a conversation about the constitutional significance
of a president who is a liar, a bigot, a criminal, a sexual predator, and a
probable traitor, as well as a party that is increasingly supportive of that liar,
bigot, criminal, sexual predator and probable traitor (while for the most part
not denying they are supporting a liar, bigot, criminal, sexual predator and
probable traitor).Part of that conversation
concerns whether when a bigot on the campaign trail speaks of a “Muslim ban,”
lawyers for the Justice Department may successfully insist that the resulting
plan is not really a Muslim ban and other related questions of executive power in
the Trump Age.The more fundamental
constitutional issue is whether a constitutional order in which an increasingly
number of people are pledging allegiance to a liar, a bigot, a criminal, a
sexual predator and a probable traitor can be repaired and what such repairs
might look like.